Latest news with #doping
New York Times
9 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Football's possible doping problem, Messi magic at the Club World Cup, and Mbappe's hospital scare
The Athletic FC ⚽ is The Athletic's daily football (or soccer, if you prefer) newsletter. Sign up to receive it directly to your inbox. Hello. As a Premier League star stares down the barrel of a possible four-year ban, we're asking: how concerned should football be about performance-enhancing drugs? On the way: 💉Doping: under control, or not? ✨ Magic Messi keeps Miami alive 🏥 Mbappe's hospital scare 🥜 Nutmegging the greatest The implications for footballers accused of doping are not remotely trivial. Many of those charged protest their innocence vehemently, but since anti-doping agencies apply strict liability principles and apportion responsibility irrespective of intent, the consequences hit hard. Paul Pogba is almost two years on from the positive test for dehydroepiandrosterone that culminated in an 18-month ban and the end of his second stint at Juventus. Once the world's most expensive player, he's free to resume his career again but is yet to find a club, stuck outside the tent with his thirties in full flow and time passing him by. Advertisement In Germany, Mario Vuskovic, a Croatia Under-21 international, found himself in a similar boat after a four-year suspension for returning a sample with EPO (erythropoietin) in it prompted Bundesliga side Hamburg to tear up his contract. He's 23 and, since 2022, has been inactive in his prime. They are two examples for Mykhailo Mudryk to dwell on with his own doping case pending. As with Pogba and Vuskovic, the Chelsea winger denies deliberate wrongdoing and says the prohibited substance he is accused of taking late last year, meldonium, was not ingested knowingly. But while intent can affect the severity of a sanction, it does not guard players against sanctions per se. An English Football Association charge against Mudryk will be dealt with in due course and the potential impact on him and Chelsea is obvious. The most extreme punishment the 24-year-old could receive is a ban spanning four years. But these cases (fairly isolated in the sport) invariably call for analysis of how common doping is in football. Based on the numbers involved, the assumption is not very — but are we seeing the full picture? Phil Buckingham took on the subject for an excellent article published this morning. It's fair to say, as he reflects, that as a team game in which technical skill matters as much as physicality (and 22 athletes are on the pitch), the illicit gains promised by doping are perceived to be smaller than in individual pursuits. At a distance, the data is encouraging. For a start, footballers are closely monitored. More than 2,000 samples were taken across the Premier League and the EFL last season, and every squad member at the 2022 FIFA World Cup took at least one test. But dig a little deeper and some of the findings are more opaque. Advertisement For instance, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that two Premier League players returned adverse tests in 2023-24, as did two others in the season before it. None received penalties. We don't know their identities, the nature of their adverse tests, or the reasons no action ensued. The English FA said only that it takes 'anti-doping in English football extremely seriously'. UEFA, meanwhile, enforced more than 15,000 tests over a five-year period leading up to 2024, but Europe's governing body wouldn't tell The Athletic how many of those returned positive findings. Mudryk's adverse sample came during a UEFA tournament while he was representing Ukraine in the Nations League in November. His next move is either to accept the FA charge or request a hearing, a £62m signing with another six years on his club contract at risk of a long stretch on the sideline. All eyes are on him, but more broadly, his case has us thinking again about how far doping in football — unintentional or otherwise — really stretches. The obstacles to Club World Cup supremacy are getting biblical. For the third time in 72 hours, thunderclouds forced a match delay yesterday, suspending Palmeiras' Group A win over Al Ahly for 40 minutes. The Gods aren't conspiring against FIFA entirely, though. Last night, we got our first proper upset as South American champions Botafogo did what virtually nobody has done for the past six months and figured European champions Paris Saint-Germain out. A deflected goal from Igor Jesus (coming to the Premier League soon) fulfilled Botafogo's promise to bury PSG in the 'cemetery of favourites'. And just when it seemed like FIFA's must-have participants, Inter Miami, might drop out of the tournament without making a dent in it, up stepped Lionel Messi to keep them in business. There's no greater clutch player in the history of the sport and the sensational finish that gave Miami a 2-1 victory against Porto proved once more that a free kick in the hands of Argentina's finest might as well be a penalty. It had more whip on it than Indiana Jones. The tournament was waiting for a moment like that. Miami were waiting for a moment like that, and so was the reputation of Major League Soccer. Take out the stench around FIFA shoe-horning Miami into the competition and there's no denying that any event is enhanced by Messi's genius. Fun and games in Canada's Gold Cup camp, where head coach Jesse Marsch is under investigation over an alleged confrontation with a Concacaf official during Tuesday's 6-0 beasting of Honduras. What's funny about this is that Marsch wasn't even on the touchline. He was serving a two-match ban after prior fun and games (and a red card) in Canada's Nations League win over the USMNT in March. Canada Soccer says it is working to 'resolve the matter' — and to be fair, the circumstances leading to it sound more than a little ridiculous. Advertisement The good thing for Marsch? Canada looked in fine fettle and are well on their way to the knockouts. In front of them, the USMNT have already made it through after disposing of the solitary genuine threat in Group D: invitational guests Saudi Arabia. Chris Richards, above, got the only goal, but the power behind it belonged to Sebastian Berhalter's sumptuous (and very awkward to defend) delivery. I think that's what they call the corridor of uncertainty. (Kick-offs ET/UK time. All Club World Cup matches are shown on DAZN in the U.S. and UK, as well as the other channels stated.) Friday: FIFA Club World Cup: Group C: Benfica vs Auckland City, 12pm/5pm; Bayern Munich vs Boca Juniors, 9pm/2am — TBS, Fubo/Channel 5; Group D: Flamengo vs Chelsea, 2pm/7pm — TNT, Fubo (U.S. only); LAFC vs ES Tunis, 6pm/11pm. Saturday: FIFA Club World Cup: Group E: Inter vs Urawa Red Diamonds, 3pm/8pm — Channel 5 (UK only); River Plate vs Monterrey, 9pm/2am — TBS, Fubo (U.S. only); Group F: Mamelodi Sundowns vs Borussia Dortmund, 12pm/5pm; Fluminense vs Ulsan HD, 6pm/11pm. Concacaf Gold Cup: Group B: Curacao vs Canada, 7pm/12am — Fox Sports, Fubo, ViX/Premier Sports. Sunday: FIFA Club World Cup: Group G: Juventus vs Wydad AC, 12pm/5pm — Channel 5 (UK only); Manchester City vs Al Ain, 9pm/2am — TNT, Fubo/Channel 5; Group H: Real Madrid vs Pachuca, 3pm/8pm — TNT, Fubo (U.S. only); Red Bull Salzburg vs Al Hilal, 6pm/11pm. Concacaf Gold Cup: Group A: Mexico vs Costa Rica, 10pm/3am; Group D: USMNT vs Haiti, 7pm/12am — both Fox Sports, Fubo, ViX/Premier Sports. Nutmegging Messi is no mean feat, and Porto's Fabio Vieira ticked that off his bucket list in Atlanta last night. Unfortunately, the on-loan Arsenal midfielder's next move was to slice a shambles of a pass with the outside of his left boot straight out of play. Just as the Louvre was making space for him, too…
New York Times
16 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Does football have a doping problem?
Arsene Wenger had a lot to get off his chest in the autumn of 2015. His Arsenal side were in danger of exiting the Champions League at the group stages and their 2-1 loss away to Dinamo Zagreb had become an acute source of irritation. Not because Arsenal had stumbled against their weakest opponents, but because the Croatian side had triumphed with a player — Arijan Ademi — who had returned a positive drugs test after playing the full 90 minutes. Advertisement Ademi would eventually be given a four-year suspension (later reduced to two on appeal) after traces of the banned steroid stanozolol were found in a routine urine sample, but Wenger bristled at Zagreb facing no disciplinary sanctions from UEFA, European football's governing body. 'That means you basically accept doping,' he said. Wenger also made clear his concerns that football had a problem. The wider game, he inferred, was ignorant of the threat of performance-enhancing drugs. 'To think we in football are just immune because we are football players is absolutely wrong,' he told reporters. 'We have to tackle these problems and not close our eyes.' Ten years on and they are pertinent comments to revisit. On Wednesday, the Football Association charged Chelsea forward Mykhailo Mudryk with violating its anti-doping rules after the banned substance meldonium was found in a urine sample when playing for his international team, Ukraine, in November. Mudryk, signed from Shakhtar Donetsk for a fee worth up to £89million ($119.5m) two years ago, must now decide whether to accept the charge, and whatever punishment — including a possible lengthy suspension — may follow, or ask for a hearing. It is the latest in a string of high-profile doping cases that have cast a cloud over football in recent years. Paul Pogba was found to have the banned anabolic agent dehydroepiandrosterone in his system when playing for Italian club Juventus in Serie A early in the 2023-24 season. The France international, 32, is free to play after serving an 18-month suspension, reduced from the initial four years on appeal, but remains without a club. Another World Cup winner, Alejandro Gomez, was also banned for two years after a test, carried out shortly before he formed part of Argentina's triumphant squad at Qatar 2022, was found to contain terbutaline. The positive result, which the player blamed on accidentally ingesting some of his son's cough medicine, only became apparent once Gomez had left Sevilla and joined Monza in 2023. He insisted he 'never intended to, and… will never, resort to a banned practice'. Advertisement Mudryk, who claimed he had 'never knowingly used any banned substances or broken any rules' and said he was 'working closely with my team to investigate how this could have happened' when it was first revealed he had failed a doping test, is likely to have his own defence and explanations, just as Manchester United goalkeeper Andre Onana did when banned for nine months when still with Ajax in 2021. Onana said the presence of the banned substance furosemide came from mistakenly taking a prescribed medication belonging to his wife. 'Everything was the result of a human mistake,' he said. Football has typically accepted these lapses and quietly moved on, adamant that the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PED) is primarily a problem for other sports. They remain infrequent enough to support that belief, but football's relationship with doping continues to be complicated. 'In my 22 years in the Premier League, I have never even heard a conversation about performance-enhancing drugs from players,' Geoff Scott, Tottenham Hotspur's former head of medicine, tells The Athletic. 'It's just not part of the game.' Scott is not alone in holding that view. The English Football Association has not suspended a player for a PED violation since Bambo Diaby, then of Barnsley in the Championship, was banned for two years in 2020. 'The benefits to a footballer are going to be marginal,' says Scott. 'Of course there are ways of improving physical fitness, but whether that makes you a better footballer is open to debate.' The FA, which oversees the process in England through the UK Anti Doping agency (UKAD), has confidence in the robustness of its testing. Figures obtained from UKAD detailed that 2,176 tests were carried out across the Premier League and EFL last season, with 982 of the samples collected from the 20 top-flight clubs. That would suggest each club is subjected to roughly 50 tests a season, but the random nature of the process ensures there are no guarantees every Premier League player will be asked to provide a sample during a 12-month window. Advertisement The overall testing numbers were 11 per cent down on the 2022-23 season, but football's authorities stress that it remains the most heavily tested sport by UKAD. Of the 8,516 tests carried out across all UK sports in the year ending March 2024, just over a third of all samples collected were from footballers, whose number admittedly eclipses all other professional sports. The doubts, though, come from what is left unreported. Through a Freedom of Information request from The Athletic, UKAD said that two players from the Premier League and Football League had returned an adverse analytical finding for a PED last season, as well as two the season before. None of the four faced any sanctions. There could be mitigating circumstances for the positive tests, such as the players in question having a valid therapeutic use exemption (TUE) or seeing the substance ingested through a permitted source, but the highly confidential process has long invited questions. The Daily Mail previously reported that 12 Premier League players were found to have traces of PEDs in tests between 2015 and 2020, with not one facing punishment. 'We take anti-doping in English football extremely seriously,' an FA spokesperson told The Athletic. 'We are fully compliant with the National Anti-Doping Policy of the UK Government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; fund one of world sport's leading anti-doping programmes; and input into targeted, researched and intelligence-led drug testing that is directed by UK Anti-Doping. 'We also operate our own dedicated social drugs programme to safeguard the physical and mental wellbeing of footballers; and to uphold the values and ethics of the sport.' Football typically chooses not to roll out a programme where every player is tested, with UKAD reporting the average cost incurred in each test is £302. FIFA, the world governing body, said last year that every player selected for the 2022 World Cup had at least one sample analysed, but governing bodies in domestic leagues typically rely upon the constant threat of being tested acting as a sufficient deterrent. Doping control officers will arrive unannounced and accompany the chosen players until the testing process is complete. A training ground visit will typically see between four and eight players tested, while after a game, the number tends to be just two. At least 90ml of urine is required in the company of a chaperone for the most common analysis, but blood samples can also be taken. Advertisement 'I would say, on average, it's probably about once a month they're there (at training grounds),' says Scott. 'Sometimes it'll be in clusters and you might get them twice in a week. Other times, it might not be a visit for five or six weeks. 'Every player has to give a one-hour window every day to be tested. For the majority of people, that's at training, so the club will give a training schedule to UKAD and they're able to turn up. It's a very real prospect of being tested on any given day. They will not feel that it's underdone. They'll feel it's overdone.' And the powers go further. 'They (anti-doping teams) can also visit players' houses,' says Andy Renshaw, formerly head physio at Liverpool. 'I can remember them going to Jordan Henderson's house early in the morning after an England international when he'd played at Wembley. It's not massively common, but it has been known. 'It's a pain, but it's a necessity. It was all taken very seriously by us. We were all acutely aware that we were responsible as staff.' The higher the level, the more a player is tested. A regular international, who plays for a team competing in Europe, could be subjected to a dozen tests a year. UEFA runs its own programmes, unlinked to UKAD. Data for the 2023-24 season, made available by UEFA in December, outlined that 3,939 samples were collected across its club and national team competitions. Almost three-quarters of those (2,888) were in-competition tests, with the highest number carried out in the Champions League. Anti-doping controls were also in place at each of the 51 games played at Euro 2024 in Germany, with UEFA saying at least four players from each team were tested and samples analysed within 48 hours. It is not known if Mudryk was among the players tested after Ukraine's three games in the competition, but internationals expected to feature in a major tournament are often the subject of targeted testing in the run-up to major tournaments. Advertisement UEFA says that more than 15,000 drug tests were carried out either before or during its competitions between the 2019-20 and 2023-24 seasons, but it declined to detail the number of adverse findings in that period when asked by The Athletic. FIFA adopts a similar testing strategy, with its own anti-doping unit operating throughout the year. Its focus falls upon the tournaments under their own jurisdiction and, inevitably, that dictates the number of tests carried out in a given year. FIFA introduced its first doping controls at the 1970 World Cup. It was typically only used at flagship events and it took until 2008 for former president Sepp Blatter to finally sign up to the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) code, a uniform set of rules spanning all sports. The calendar year of 2023, as outlined in the governing body's annual anti-doping report, saw 1,592 tests carried out across FIFA's seven competitions in the men's and women's games, with the majority coming at the Women's World Cup in Australia. The total testing number was markedly down on the 2,921 of the previous year, but that figure was inflated by the 2022 Men's World Cup in Qatar. Including qualification, almost 2,200 tests were carried out, with FIFA saying that all 1,248 players called up to World Cup squads underwent at least one test. That would mean Gomez was passing a FIFA test at broadly the same time he was giving an adverse finding while a player with his Spanish team, Sevilla, with that result only coming to light once the Argentine had joined Monza in Italy. The only adverse finding FIFA detected ahead of or during Qatar belonged to Costa Rica international Orlando Moises Galo Calderon. He tested positive for the anabolic steroid clostebol two months before the start of the tournament when part of a national team training camp in South Korea. Calderon maintained his innocence, insisting his positive result had been the result of cross-contamination. Clostebol, he argued, had been ingested when applying an over-the-counter medication cream to his partner three times a day following surgery. Advertisement A FIFA disciplinary hearing accepted that 'on the balance of probability', Calderon had not intentionally doped, but still handed him a 12-month suspension, half of what he might have otherwise expected. FIFA's anti-doping report from 2022 also outlined that a further four international players from El Salvador (Erick Alejandro Rivera), Djibouti (Sabri Ali Mohamed), Ivory Coast (Sylvain Gbohouo) and Honduras (Wisdom Quaye) were suspended for between 18 months and four years for anti-doping violations during the qualification process. None of those nations, though, faced their own sanctions. The MLS, meanwhile, largely goes its own way. They operate outside of US Soccer and, therefore, do no fall under the jurisdiction of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Players face testing through the league's substance abuse and behavioural health programme and policy, but the collective bargaining agreement outlines that clubs should be informed by the MLS of any adverse findings 'only when reasonably necessary'. Elite football can justifiably claim it has not faced the same problems as other sports focused upon the individual, where testing programmes can be far more stringent. In an 11-month cycle leading up to the Paris Olympics last year, for example, athletes from Kenya, China and Ethiopia underwent an average of at least nine out-of-competition tests, according to data from the Athletics Integrity Unit. Testing in athletics remains targeted, focusing most heavily on nations with the poorest anti-doping records. And the higher an athlete's profile, the greater the testing. Cycling, too, has made changes to cleanse a reputation sullied by the likes of Lance Armstrong. An anti-doping programme overseen by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) collected 15,200 samples in 2023, a 10 per cent increase on the previous year. Tennis, too, has faced its own doping controversies. Men's world No 1 Jannik Sinner returned two positive samples for clostebol, a banned anabolic steroid, in March 2024, part of the International Tennis Integrity Agency's (ITIA) programme of 9,151 tests on male and female tennis players over 12 months. The ITIA convened an independent hearing in which it was found that Sinner bore 'no fault or negligence' for those positive tests. The panel accepted the Italian's explanation that the positive tests had been caused via contamination from a spray used by his physiotherapist. Advertisement Wada accepted that Sinner did not intentionally dope, but challenged the idea that he should not be in some way responsible for his team's actions. It took the case to CAS, but it was never heard: Sinner and WADA entered into a case resolution agreement and the player was banned for three months. He later said that he 'did not want' to accept WADA's offer, adding that he 'knew what really happened', but was conscious that entering into the case resolution agreement meant he avoided any chance of a more severe punishment at CAS. Mudryk, Pogba and Onana are high-profile examples of a recent vintage, but football's ignoble history of doping stretches back many years. Arsenal manager Leslie Knighton admitted he had given his players 'courage pills' for an FA Cup tie with West Ham United in 1925 after visiting a 'distinguished West End doctor'. Knighton, who says he took one before his players, wrote in his autobiography that 'there was something in those pills, I felt I could push down a wall with my fist'. Other clubs have operated under a swirl of speculation. Former Marseille midfielder Jean-Jacques Eydelie wrote in his autobiography of the 'suspicious injections' given to players in their halcyon period of the early 1990s, an assertion backed up by his team-mate Chris Waddle in an interview with The Sun in 2003. 'Players were injected all the time at Marseille,' Waddle said. '(They) said the injections would help our recovery after games. I had a couple of injections, but they didn't make any difference. I don't know what it was, but no one ever failed drug tests and nothing illegal showed up.' Another Marseille player, Tony Cascarino, also said he had received injections, telling The Times in 2003: 'Whatever the substance was, my performances improved. I cling to the sliver of hope that it was legal, though I'm 99 per cent sure it wasn't.' In 2006, the French Football Federation and the Ligue de Football Professionnel issued a statement saying UEFA had checked anti-doping tests conducted after the 1993 final and found nothing adverse. The Marseille president Bernard Tapie, who died in 2021, also denied Eydelie's claims. The 1996 Champions League final was another shrouded in doping controversy. Juventus squeezed past Ajax on penalties, but the Italian club subsequently faced an investigation into the use of EPO between 1994 and 1998. Club chairman Antonio Giraudo, who denied the charges, was acquitted at a trial in Turin in 2004 but club doctor Riccardo Agricola was given a 22-month prison sentence for supplying banned substances, including EPO. He eventually got the conviction quashed on appeal but Milan's win still rankles for Ajax. Advertisement Italian football, by that point, was facing other problems. Edgar Davids and Jaap Stam, then of Juventus and Lazio respectively, were both initially banned for five months after tests discovered elevated levels of the prohibited steroid nandrolone in 2001, with both being reduced to four months on appeal. Frank de Boer was hit with a one-year suspension for the same positive results in June 2001, but that punishment was reduced to just over two months on appeal. All protested their innocence. And then there was Pep Guardiola, now Manchester City manager, who failed two drug tests when a midfielder with Brescia in 2001. Traces of nandrolone, the anabolic steroid that can increase strength and speed, were detected and Guardiola was banned for four months. An eight-year legal battle followed, with it eventually accepted that Guardiola's two samples had been 'unstable' during storage. Exoneration only came when Guardiola — who always denied any wrongdoing — had taken up a position coaching at Barcelona. The controversies dented Italy's reputation, with some players who faced Italian clubs still finding it hard to move on. In February 2024, former Manchester United players Gary Neville and Roy Keane discussed their suspicions around some of the teams they faced in Champions League ties, especially those from Italy, on the Stick to Football podcast. 'We thought at the time there were things that physically (were not correct),' Neville said. 'We were fit, we weren't drinkers. I came off the pitch against an Italian team and thought: 'That's not right'. I know that a couple of the other lads in the mid-2000s thought exactly the same thing.' Keane added. 'When we played certain teams, I would be walking off and you were absolutely shattered. I would be looking at the players I played against, a couple of the Italian teams, and they looked like they'd not even played a match.' The motivation to dope has always been there, albeit more for the individual than the team. 'While there is still no consensus on whether the ergogenic effects of so-called performance-enhancing drugs directly impact sports performance, footballers may benefit from certain drugs given the physiological demands of the game, alongside increasingly congested competition schedules,' says Professor Susan Backhouse, who leads the sporting integrity research team at Leeds Beckett University. Advertisement 'For example, anabolic agents may improve explosive actions, such as sprinting and change of direction, and stimulants, such as ephedrine, may improve footballers' energy levels.' Wenger's comments at the beginning of this article would suggest football has too often looked in the other direction. It is not an endurance sport such as cycling or long-distance running, and it is not a sport heavily reliant on strength, such as rugby or weightlifting. In a team game predominantly shaped by skill, technique and coaching, is there enough to gain? 'If you're a footballer and you can increase your speed, your explosive power, your endurance, that's going to make a big difference to your overall performance,' says Professor Adam Nicholls, leader of sport psychology and coaching group at the University of Hull, who has worked extensively on doping. 'It's still a highly aerobic sport with lots of sprints. Fitness is still a major requirement.' Dr John William Devine, the senior lecturer in ethics at Swansea University's sports science department, agrees. 'It's not true that because football is a skill-based sport that doping wouldn't help. It is true that doping cannot help you with the kind of more advanced skills involved in being a top-flight footballer, but they can help you to be stronger and faster and recover better.' If there is a thread that links all of football's high-profile positive cases, it is the protestations of innocence that follow. Onana said he had mistakenly taken his wife's medication, believing it to be aspirin, while Pogba argued it was the fault of a nutritional supplement given to him by his doctor. Mudryk also claimed ignorance as to how he had failed his test. The strict liability principle adopted by football and other sports presents no way around a suspension in the majority of cases, but it does allow scope for bans to be reduced. Pogba and Onana both took their initial suspensions to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and successfully had their bans trimmed. Advertisement Hull City's Ecuadorean midfielder Oscar Zambrano, the other player contracted to an English club banned for a positive drugs test last season, was initially sidelined for 16 months in October by CONMEBOL, the governing body of South American football, but an appeal with CAS has seen that reduced to 12 months. Zambrano will be available to play again from November. 'The reason that the World Anti-Doping Code operates with a strict liability principle is that proving intent is one of the most difficult things to establish in doping,' explains Dr Devine. 'The strict liability principle allows sports governing bodies to pursue cases without having to prove intent. 'Sport operates with a soft strict liability approach, in the sense that intent does not feature as an element of the offence, but intent is taken into account at the point of determining sanctions. 'The difficulty, in a way, is that it's not necessarily the case that you've cheated if you've doped. If we say that cheating is intentionally breaking the rules, the strict liability approach means you can break the rules without intending to do so. You can inadvertently dope.' Clubs stress the need for all medications to be checked by staff before they are taken, while supplements pose their own dangers. 'It was made crystal clear to the players at the very start of every season that it was their responsibility,' says Renshaw. 'It's what they're given when away on international duty where you might get problems. A lot of the players do see their own people for nutrition and guidance. That is an absolute minefield if people aren't always fully aware of the regulations. 'The nature of the game now, with so many different nationalities at any one club, the level of care and attention can vary greatly. It's not easy to communicate with the staff sometimes. We've always got to stay on top of that, but there's a presumptive part of it, where a player will presume what they're given is OK.' Advertisement There is often a level of sympathy afforded to players from within the game. Bans remain in place but are often reduced from what they might have been. The modern outlier to that is Mario Vuskovic, the Croatian under-21 international who plays for German side Hamburg. He tested positive for EPO after a training session in 2022 and was handed a two-year ban by the German FA. A one-year suspension in return for admitting guilt was rejected and Vuskovic's case, like so many, was then taken to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, who increased Vuskovic's ban to four years. A final appeal to the Swiss Federal Court in February also failed. Unavailable until November 2026 — until then, he must train by himself — Vuskovic's Hamburg contract was torn up by mutual consent, but he remains fiercely popular among fans of a club that won promotion back to the Bundesliga in May. Vuskovic's ongoing insistence on his innocence, citing a 'laboratory error in testing', is widely accepted by supporters, while his team-mates posed with a 'Free Mario' banner after a match in May 2024. 'I am innocent,' he told 11freunde. 'And everyone knows it. That's the crazy thing.' His club, too, have behaved sympathetically. He may no longer have a contract with Hamburg, but there is a future agreement which can kick in once his ban expires. A possible off-field role for Vuskovic has also been discussed, but Hamburg are yet to comment publicly on that. Football's quiet fight against doping will continue, long after Mudryk's case is heard. The question, though, goes back to Wenger and that appetite to combat the threat once and for all. Some remain unconvinced. 'All sports are the same, they don't want the scrutiny,' says Professor Nicholls. 'It can bring negativity to the game. I'm sure there are people within these organisations who want to catch the cheats, but for an overall governing body, it's not really in their interests.' (Top photo design: Kelsea Petersen/The Athletic)
The Guardian
a day ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
Enzo Maresca has not spoken to Mykhailo Mudryk since May, manager reveals
Enzo Maresca has said he has not spoken to Mykhailo Mudryk since the Football Association announced on Wednesday that the Chelsea winger has been charged with doping offences. Mudryk is facing a four-year ban if he is found guilty by the FA of taking a banned substance. Maresca said he still trusts the Ukraine international and plans to check on his welfare soon, but Chelsea's head coach added that he has had no contact with the 24-year-old since May. 'I spoke with Misha in Poland when we played the Conference League final,' he said. 'I didn't speak with him since that time. 'To be honest, I didn't see the news. They communicated to me last night. 'The last time I spoke with Misha he was quite good. I didn't see him worried or at least I didn't see him not good. Since that day I didn't speak with him, so I don't know how he is now. But for sure in the next days and weeks we are going to have direct contact with him.' Mudryk has not played since November and was provisionally suspended the following month after producing a positive A sample. It is believed the banned performance-enhancing substance meldonium was found in his system. 'Misha is a Chelsea player,' Maresca said. 'Until he's not a Chelsea player, I will trust all the Chelsea players. It's not just about Misha. It is in general.' Maresca said Chelsea would sign a winger regardless of the outcome of Mudryk's case. They are keen on Borussia Dortmund's Jamie Gittens and have made an inquiry for Lyon's Malick Fofana. 'We had already one entire season almost without Misha,' Maresca said. 'We're going to decide to go for a winger not because of Misha. It's something quite clear that it's a position that we need to improve.' Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Chelsea face Flamengo in scorching conditions in Philadelphia in their second game in the Club World Cup on Friday. The Brazilian champions are unbeaten in nine games in all competitions and have signed the former Chelsea midfielder Jorginho from Arsenal.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Enzo Maresca has not spoken to Mykhailo Mudryk since May
Enzo Maresca said he will be in contact with Mykhailo Mudryk soon. Enzo Maresca said he will be in contact with Mykhailo Mudryk soon. Photograph: Emilee Chinn/Fifa/Getty Images Enzo Maresca has said he has not spoken to Mykhailo Mudryk since the Football Association announced on Wednesday that the Chelsea winger has been charged with doping offences. Mudryk is facing a four-year ban if he is found guilty by the FA of taking a banned substance. Maresca said he still trusts the Ukraine international and plans to check on his welfare soon, but Chelsea's head coach added that he has had no contact with the 24-year-old since May. 'I spoke with Misha in Poland when we played the Conference League final,' he said. 'I didn't speak with him since that time. Advertisement Related: Chelsea make Gittens top target and keep Kudus and João Pedro in sights 'To be honest, I didn't see the news. They communicated to me last night. 'The last time I spoke with Misha he was quite good. I didn't see him worried or at least I didn't see him not good. Since that day I didn't speak with him, so I don't know how he is now. But for sure in the next days and weeks we are going to have direct contact with him.' Mudryk has not played since November and was provisionally suspended the following month after producing a positive A sample. It is believed the banned performance-enhancing substance meldonium was found in his system. Advertisement 'Misha is a Chelsea player,' Maresca said. 'Until he's not a Chelsea player, I will trust all the Chelsea players. It's not just about Misha. It is in general.' Maresca said Chelsea would sign a winger regardless of the outcome of Mudryk's case. They are keen on Borussia Dortmund's Jamie Gittens and have made a inquiry for Lyon's Malick Fofana. 'We had already one entire season almost without Misha,' Maresca said. 'We're going to decide to go for a winger not because of Misha. It's something quite clear that it's a position that we need to improve.' Chelsea face Flamengo in scorching conditions in Philadelphia in their second game in the Club World Cup on Friday. The Brazilian champions are unbeaten in nine games in all competitions and have signed the former Chelsea midfielder Jorginho from Arsenal.
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Mykhailo Mudryk: Enzo Maresca confirms Chelsea response to doping charge
Enzo Maresca says Mykhailo Mudryk continues to be supported by Chelsea after being charged by the Football Association with breaching doping regulations. The FA announced on Wednesday that Mudryk had been charged, having been provisionally suspended last November after testing positive for a banned substance. Advertisement Mudryk was last spotted with the squad during the Conference League celebrations in Poland last month, but has since lost squad number with star man Cole Palmer set to wear the No10 shirt next season. Asked for an update on Thursday, Blues boss Enzo Maresca said: "I spoke with Mischa in Poland when we played the Conference League final. I haven't spoke with him since then. "I didn't see the news but they communicated it to me but there is nothing more I can add because I don't have more information." He added: "Last time I spoke to him he was quite good, I didn't see him worried, I didn't speak to him since then so I don't know but for sure we will have contact with him." Mudryk denies any wrongdoing.
